I finished the rout out and the neck fit ALMOST perfect. I had to tweak it a bit.

Next came drilling the holes for the neck. I'm kind of going in reverse here so I took the original body and laid it on top of the new one and used transfer punches to lay out the holes. This Tele has three screws, two wood screws and one machine screw that is received by a threaded washer routed in the neck. After I drilled the holes I went to attach the neck and THEY DIDN'T FIT! I found the holes in the original body were drilled slightly askew and by the time the point of the transfer punch hit the new wood, they were all off.

So I had to drill out the holes to 1/4" and glue in dowels. Then I measured all of them with a caliper and marked the locations with a scoring knife. The dowels will be hidden behind the plate so I'm not totally bummed.

Once the neck was attached I discovered the neck extension on the body was a bit wide (the pitfalls of using the body to make the template) so once the neck came off I trimmed that area to be flush with the neck.

I reassembled the guitar back to its original form and gave it back to my son. I figure once the final finish is applied, I'd like to wait 3-4 weeks for it to fully cure before replacing the old body.

I don't want to use nitro because I'll be spraying indoors. Someone suggested Target EM6000. StewMac sells Target 7000HLB for guitar finishing. So I guess they recommend that over the 6000, which they don't sell. Anyone use WB finishes on instruments? Should I go with the 7000?